An open letter to British people.

[alexr_rwx]

People of the United Kingdom,

It's come to my attention that in aerospace engineering contexts, you may be using a different set of reference axes for discussing space. And I say unto you, verily -- right, up, and forward are positive. Please correct any practices you might be employing that describe "down" with positive numbers. To do otherwise would be unconscionable, especially in light of our shared cultural heritage with respect to such fundamental concepts as positivity.

Thanks in advance,

--
-- alexr

Comments

Go-go Gadget Nerdiness!

[sault.livejournal.com]

Give 'em Hell. Or Hades. Or whatever.

[unitvector.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly.

you are building spaceship?

[cola-fan.livejournal.com]

How did this come up?

Good open letter.

[klausboy.livejournal.com]

hey dude, so do we. out the front of the plane (X), the right wing(Y), and down (Z) at least for flight dynamics purposes. Its for all these the eulerian angles and rotation and stuff

stupid klaus!

[klausboy.livejournal.com]

my bad dude, thats a left handed system, i meant out the left wing. for Y.

but sewwiously, thats the way it is, down is positive for the purposes of yaw pitch roll. Alot of modern flight sims don't do it that way, but thats just for programming purposes (i think they did it wrong and realized), they also do transformations so the equations written in the classic system work. I know its silly, but thats the way it be.

Re: stupid klaus!

[(Anonymous)]

Right; for flight dynamics we use the British nomenclature. (I mean, would you really want the weight of your aircraft to be negative?) But for things like structures analyses we still use standard axes while the British in their empirical wisdom continue with the z-positive-down business. An endearingly quaint practice to be sure, but it just ain't American.